There's a lot of really strong dynasty analysis out there, especially when compared to five or ten years ago. But most of it is so dang practical-- Player X is undervalued, Player Y's workload is troubling, the market at this position is irrational, and take this specific action to win your league. Dynasty, in Theory is meant as a corrective, offering insights and takeaways into the strategic and structural nature of the game that might not lead to an immediate benefit but which should help us become better players over time.

So You Have An Opinion...

This title this week is deliberately provocative. You don't need me to teach you how to arrive at an opinion-- there's a bevy of off-color quips that attest to that. Forming opinions is so easy that if you ask five fantasy football managers what they think about a player you're liable to get seven different opinions about him.

Do I perhaps mean "how to ensure your opinions are more likely to be good than bad"? Again, no. That would be an incredibly valuable article (more realistically, it would be an incredibly valuable corpus, because that sounds like an entire life's work), but it's not what we're here for today.

Instead, today, I want to ask something more along the lines of: "Given that you already have an opinion, how should you act on that opinion so that you receive the most benefit from it". Consider this an etiquette guide, a recommendation on how opinion-havers should comport themselves in public. And like all who purport to teach proper behavior, I suppose I should begin by modeling it myself.

Recounting That One Time I Had an Opinion

I'm generally not a fan of making rankings simply because players serve different roles on different rosters. Players serve three primary functions on a team: a source of production, a means of exchange, and a store of value. All players will naturally differ in how well they accomplish each role, so a team's preferences could shift dramatically based on which area is the greatest need. Travis Kelce is a nonpareil source of production, but the pool of potential trade partners is fairly limited and his long-term value expectations are fairly low.

With that said, I think few things impose discipline quite as well as producing ordered lists. You can say you love a player, but until you stack him up against the alternatives and commit to a preference, it's just empty words. So from time to time, I like to sit down and make a list for my own sake. Last weekend I did just that for the wide receiver position, talking through my process on Twitter as I went.

Final rankings:
Jefferson
Chase
—
Olave
St.Brown
Brown
Lamb
—
Hill
Smith
Wilson
Waddle
Diggs
Pittman
Puka
Nico
Higgins
—
JSN
Adams
Flowers
London
Addison
Keenan
Ridley
Aiyuk
Deebo
Kupp
Metcalf
Watson
—
Dotson
McLaurin
Jakobi
Diontae
DJM
Hollywood

Rough first pass.

— Adam Harstad (@AdamHarstad) October 1, 2023

Now, remember, the point here isn't "how to form an opinion", so I'm not going to focus on how that list was made. (You can click through the thread if you're curious about that.) And it's not "how to make sure your opinions are high-quality", so I'm not even concerned with questions of whether that's an especially good list or not. (I happen to like it, obviously, but many will disagree.)

I just want to talk about what comes after. Now that I have an opinion, what do I do about it? How can I use that list in a way that maximizes the chances that my dynasty teams succeed in the long term? Here's a quick rule of thumb I like:

Believe You're Right, Act Like You're Wrong

Let's focus attention on names 13-15 on that list: Puka Nacua, Nico Collins, and Tee Higgins. Based on my rankings, I would prefer both Nacua and Collins to Higgins. Again, setting aside questions of whether this opinion is right, it's clearly actionable. KeepTradeCut.com maintains crowdsourced dynasty rankings and currently has Higgins as the #17 receiver, Nacua at #19, and Collins at #27. At the time, Higgins' lead was even larger.

If I believe what I believe (and I do), does this mean I'm offering Tee Higgins for Collins or Nacua on teams where I have him? Yes and no. I did, in fact, offer Higgins for Nacua.

But I didn't offer him for Collins, despite that being a roughly equivalently good deal in my opinion. And there are two big reasons why, though both essentially get back to the importance of hedging your bets.

Reason #1: Diversifying Risks

I have two dynasty rosters and, all else being equal, I'd rather not have the same players on both. This way a single bad injury (or bad call) can't ruin both my teams at once. I had Higgins on one team, and on my other team I already had Collins but I did not have Nacua. Trading Higgins for Nacua would not make my rosters any less distinct, but trading Higgins for Collins would.

Diversification is a compelling interest, but not the only one. If a value gap is sufficiently large, I'll gladly risk a less-diverse roster. If I was offered DeVonta Smith for Tee Higgins I would take that despite having Smith on my other roster, simply because Smith ranks far enough above Higgins to be worth the loss in diversity. Similarly, I'll often have the same names at the end of both of my benches just because the cost of adding someone off of waivers is essentially zero and something can't be a "risk" if there is no cost. (The only player I currently have on both teams is Gus Edwards because he was free and I judged the risk of injury or underperformance from J.K. Dobbins rather high.)

(The biggest advantage of only managing a single dynasty team, in my opinion, is not having to worry about overexposure.)

Reason #2: Leveraging the Market

Higgins might have been ahead of Nacua in the consensus at the time of my rankings, but I could see that the writing was already on the wall that this was about to change. As we see, the Nacua has nearly caught up to Higgins on KeepTradeCut over the last week and has already passed him on FantasyCalc, which measures what players are currently costing in actual dynasty trades. If I wasn't already certain of the changing tides, a quick opinion poll cemented it:

Just offered Higgins for Nacua in dynasty. Who you taking?

— Adam Harstad (@AdamHarstad) October 1, 2023

Meanwhile, Collins' consensus value was nowhere near Higgins and showed no signs of bridging that gap. (He ranks higher on FantasyCalc, indicating strong trade value recently, but still trails Higgins-- 22nd to 18th.)

Just because I think the market is wrong doesn't mean I want to bet that the market is wrong if I don't have to. If I prefer Collins to Higgins but the market prefers Higgins to Collins, then I want to trade Higgins for Collins... but only at prevailing market rates. (At the moment, that'd be roughly equal to Higgins for Collins and a 2024 3rd; at the time of my rankings, that would probably have been closer to Higgins for Collins and a 2nd.)

If I'm higher than consensus on a player, I want to buy that player... at current consensus prices. If I'm lower than consensus on a player, I want to sell him... at current consensus prices. Even when I have an opinion on what a player should be worth, I never trade on those values. I am always, to the fullest extent possible, trying to get deals done at as close to current market rates as possible.

The advantage this provides is extreme. If I were to trade directly off of my rankings, then there are two possibilities. If I'm right about the players, then I win the trade. If the market is right about the players, then I lose the trade.

If I make that trade at market price, there are also two possibilities. If I'm right about the players, then I win the trade. If the market is right about the players... then there's a 50/50 shot I still win the trade, anyway. My downside risk is negligible; even if I'm wrong, my team is no better and no worse in expectation.

Maintaining market discipline lets us capture all of the upside of having an opinion without dealing with any of the downside.

Doesn't This Mean You Miss Out On Good Deals?

Yes, it does. There are a lot of Higgins-for-Collins type deals that I could have made but didn't over the years, and if I'm right more often than I'm wrong, I'd expect those deals to have been positive value for my team.

A willingness to aggressively trade off of my own values instead of waiting for the market would give my teams slightly more upside. But it would also greatly increase the downside. If you manage your team as if your opinions are right, it will be devastating when they're wrong. If you manage your team as if your opinions are wrong, it won't matter in the slightest if they are or not.

This is an area where playing in many leagues can be an advantage; if the manager with Nico Collins isn't willing to sell at current market rates in one league, there's a good chance the manager will be willing in another. Given a large enough sample of leagues, you can consistently buy players in the leagues where they are cheapest to maximize your value gains over time. With just two leagues at my disposal, this isn't an option - and there are often times I feel a player is undervalued - but I'm unable to bet on that belief.

I would challenge this entire framing of "missing out on good deals", though. The possible action space in dynasty is huge. There are an uncountable number of trades you could be making at any given moment but are not. Countless number of them will be good trades that were available for the taking. If I judge myself against the standard of all the things I could have done, I'm setting myself up for failure. It's more important to me to ensure the actions that I take are sound. Down any other path lies madness.

That's just me. I think humility is sound policy from a team-management perspective because it limits the downside of being wrong, and I think it's a sound policy from a mental health perspective because it limits your culpability when things turn out badly. (In this hobby, things will often turn out badly.)

To answer the original question: How should you have an opinion? Very carefully, if at all.